Voices sounded behind him. Teenagers scrambled up the path to the bluff, their raucous laughter and off-color jokes whooping through the quiet, windswept area. He ignored them, letting their voices flow through him like sand flowing through a gla.s.s.
One of them, a female, said, "Mm-mm, will you look at that."
A boy laughed. "What, a freaking weirdo on a freaking park bench? Dime a dozen, babe."
"You got no imagination. That there"s a juicy piece of USDA prime beef. Look at them muscles. I could love me some of that. Think his organs have been injected with growth hormones?"
"Girl, you a ho."
Another called out in a high voice, "You guys. Look at the sky."
Various exclamations followed. "That"s like something from a horror flick. Hitchc.o.c.k, right? Or was it Scorsese?"
"How do they get the birds to do that? Are we on TV?"
"What kind of birds are they?" the girl asked.
"Hawks, I think. Hundreds of them. Maybe a thousand? I"ve never seen so many circling around."
"They look like a tornado. That"s not right. It"s not natural."
Michael continued to speak to his people. Brothers, we keep hunting south.
Still along the Lake? one of them asked, tilting in his flight so the sun shone on proud red-tail feathers.
Always along the Lake, he answered. He and his old teacher had narrowed the search down to the sh.o.r.es of Lake Michigan. That was still a ma.s.sive amount of territory to cover, and they were fast running out of time.
Then: i need help!
The cry ripped across the psychic realm. Unprepared, wide open, Michael reeled from the shock. He heard the babble of teenagers as though through the roar of rushing water. Hands hooked under his arms to help him to his feet. He shook them off, focusing all the considerable force of his attention on that internal, ephemeral place.
There she was.
She was coming awake. She had ripped through the veil herself, and energy blazed from her like she was a psychic version of Chern.o.byl. Anyone with the capacity to see the psychic realm could see her. She was completely unprotected, and he was too far away.
His heart kicked.
He twisted, lunged down the path to his car, roared at the sky.
A whirling tower of a thousand hawks screamed in reply and hurtled southeast.
Chapter Seven.
MARY NEVER REMEMBERED how she got from the Grotto back to her car. She simply became aware again of her surroundings when she was sitting behind the wheel, her head lying back on the rest. The sun had angled lower on the western horizon. The reflection of it caught in her rearview mirror, a great orange-red blaze that blinded her so that she had to squint and turn her face away.
She was covered in sweat as though she had raced the entire distance back. For all she knew, she had done just that. Taking a deep, shuddering breath, she pulled the sleeve of her sweater over one fist and scrubbed at her face. Then she rolled down all four windows to let in the cold fresh air.
She shied away from thinking about what had just happened. It was too much. She couldn"t wrap her brain around it. All she knew was that she felt different. She felt eerie, light and hollow like a bird"s bone. The horrific pressure that had been building up inside of her, as though someone had been piling rocks one by one on her chest, had disappeared as if it had never been.
The world looked different as well. Everything around her seemed in constant motion, rippling as if a transparent Van Gogh painting had been draped across reality. She didn"t know how to interpret what she was seeing, but the trees along the line of horizon seemed to have a glow about them, a shimmer like a desert mirage. She sensed whispers again around the edges of her mind.
Van Gogh had cut off his own ear. Had he heard whispers too? Had he been trying to make it stop?
Without her permission, her mind slipped back to what had happened in the Grotto. What had the Lady said?
You"re in danger.
"Riiight," she croaked, just to hear the sound of her own voice. It seemed to shock the silence in the car. "Let"s review. I"m f.u.c.king nuts. Any questions?"
What had they said in psych cla.s.s? Just because you"re paranoid doesn"t mean anything. You"re just paranoid. She continued speaking out loud, as she needed to hear the sound of her own voice. "I guess I"ve had that psychotic break now. I"m suffering from delusions-and now I"m talking to myself. Gretchen should have warned me that I had a seventy-two-hour psychiatric detention in my near future."
There went her medical license and career. Whoopsie.
All of a sudden she was ravenous, as though her lack of appet.i.te over the last couple of months had finally caught up with her. Images of different dishes flooded her mind and made her mouth water. She craved normality as much as food, and she desperately wanted to be surrounded with noise, humanity and ba.n.a.lity. Her fingers trembled as she started the car. She had to find somewhere to eat. She was too shaky to drive the hour or so trip home without it.
Those incredible eyes, starred with candlelight. You can"t go home, the Lady had said. You must try to find me.
What the h.e.l.l did that mean? And why was she looking for meaning in something that was so clearly insane? She shuddered and told herself to stop. She would eat first, get steadier, dig through her purse for her car keys and her sanity, and then think about what had happened. Where should she go for dinner?
Unsure about what the dining options were after several years" absence, she drove north to Cleveland Road, cut east and turned south on Grape Road in the neighboring town of Mishawaka.
The area had once been farmland but had, due to urban sprawl, become the main shopping and dining area for the region. Over time, as many of the businesses had moved to the Grape Road district, Mishawaka had received welcome additions to its tax revenue stream, but as a result the downtown area of South Bend was riddled with urban decay.
She caught sight of a T.G.I. Friday"s, and on impulse she pulled into the parking lot. The restaurant was everything she had hoped to find: cheerful, noisy and ba.n.a.l. She parked, stripped off her jacket and left it in the car. Climbing out and locking the doors, she went inside and stopped at the hostess desk. Overloud music, flickering imagery from high-mounted flat-screens, the red and white-striped decor and the babble of various conversations crashed over her head.
The wavy Van Gogh effect was everywhere in the restaurant. Reflections of light were sharp on the polished wood and edges of gla.s.s. For a moment everything seemed to shift, as if it were breathing. She stood disoriented and somewhat sick, as a young waitress in jeans hurried toward her.
"Hi, how many?" the waitress asked in a bright voice.
The girl was very Van Gogh, radiating near-invisible ripples like steam rising from a pot of boiling water. Trying to make it stop, Mary blinked several times as she looked around. Even though the day had faded into early evening, the tables were crowded. A high proportion of the patrons were families with young children. Everyone was haloed with the same kind of rippling effect.
She shifted from foot to foot. Maybe coming here was a mistake. She would hate to cut off her ear in public.
She became aware of the waitress"s fixed, patient smile and consulted her watch. It was already almost five o"clock. Where the h.e.l.l had the time gone?
"I"m alone," she said. "I can eat at the bar."
"Okay! Here"s a menu. Just go have a seat, and someone will be with you in a minute."
She took the menu and went to the bar, where the music was somewhat lower. Unfortunately, it still competed with the noise from the flat-screen mounted high in one corner. The local news would be starting soon, so she chose a seat nearest the television, although she still wasn"t sure she would be able to stay. The overload of input made her head throb worse than ever. The light, hollow sensation from earlier had intensified until she felt as if she was only loosely connected to her flesh.
The bartender worked in an area ringed by the bar. He came up to her, a young, blond male with an appreciative, blinding Donny Osmond smile.
"How"re you doing today?" he asked. He wiped the area in front of her.
Mary cleared her throat and tried not to look at his mouth. "It"s so noisy in here."
His smile turned crooked. "Yeah, I"ve gone deaf since I started working here. I can ask the manager to turn it down, but I can"t promise anything. It"s out of my control."
"Thanks."
"Can I get you something to drink?"
"c.o.ke, please." She opened the menu and the items blurred in front of her. "I"m starving, so anything sounds good. What"s quick?"
"The burgers come up pretty fast."
She ordered a burger with everything, fries and a salad, and sucked down the c.o.ke he placed in front of her. He brought her the salad and refilled her drink as she tore into the food. "You weren"t kidding about being hungry."
The high fructose corn syrup from the c.o.ke and the first few bites of food helped to anchor her back in her body. Conscious of the bartender"s speculative expression, she swallowed and told him a version of the truth. "I"ve been too busy to eat right these last few weeks, and all of a sudden it caught up with me."
"Oh yeah? I do that when I"m studying for finals. I live on caffeine and cigarettes. Afterward I sleep for three days."
"Where do you go to school, Notre Dame?" she asked.
He laughed. "Naw, can"t afford that. I"m going to IUSB. I"m majoring in business administration."
The South Bend area was filled with higher education schools. Notre Dame University was the most famous of the schools, but there were also Indiana University at South Bend, St. Mary"s College, Holy Cross, Bethel, Ivy Tech and others. The wide choice, together with a relatively low cost of housing, made the area a good place to pursue a higher education.
When her aunt had died, the inheritance Mary had received had been relatively modest. She had been able to afford the prestige of a Notre Dame degree but little else, so she"d had to share an apartment with three other young women to cover housing costs.
The bartender leaned against his side of the bar and talked about school while she polished off her salad. She kept one shoulder hunched against the intrusion of his admiring presence, as her gaze returned again and again to his moving mouth. Those strong, bleached teeth would make quite a bite impression.
She had treated a bite victim last week. It had been a human bite, not animal. Each tooth mark had made a distinct puncture. Dots of blood had welled from the tiny wounds. After dressing it, she had given the victim a teta.n.u.s shot and a round of antibiotics. Nasty things, human bites.
Her burger and fries seemed to take forever to arrive. At last the bartender took away her empty salad plate, brought her the burger platter and moved down the bar to serve someone else. She tore into her burger with the same single-mindedness she had shown for the salad, chewing while she sprinkled catsup on her French fries.
Then she caught sight of the bite she had taken out of the burger. The beef patty oozed pinkish juice. She looked at the bright red sprinkled across the fries, and the food in her mouth transformed into a rock as her ravenous hunger fled as abruptly as it had appeared. She fought to swallow, gagged and gulped more c.o.ke to shift the clump down her throat.
The early evening news caught her attention and she looked up. The bar area was noisier than she thought it would be, and the TV"s volume was turned low. The channel was set on a news show that was more sensational than she preferred, so she didn"t think she was missing much.
She glanced up a couple of times as she struggled to eat a few more bites. She was unable to hear the news anchor"s voice-over, so she had no warning. From one glance to the next, the scene changed. When she looked up, she found herself staring at a broadcast being filmed live from her neighborhood in St. Joe.
They were filming her house.
It was on fire. Flames poured out of the windows.
The HDTV swam in her vision. She coughed food.
"Hey," said the bartender. He moved back toward her. "Are you all right?"
She waved her hand toward the television and wheezed, "Turn it up. That"s my house."
"What?" He glanced up. "You"re s.h.i.tting me. Hold on."
He searched for the remote while Mary stared at the scene of trucks, firefighters and flames that shot out of every window of her ivory tower. The bartender found the remote and punched the volume up in time to catch the end of the news segment.
". . . A neighbor called it in just after three o"clock this afternoon. No one knows yet if the owner was inside. Officials say that they should have the fire out before dark. It might be well into tomorrow before what"s left of the home is cool enough to inspect. There"ll be more live coverage tonight. . . ."
Mary"s pulse pounded so hard she could hear it in her ears. She put a hand to her mouth, to her forehead. The bartender, his young handsome face concerned, leaned toward her. His lips moved around those sharp white teeth. He seemed to be asking if she was all right.
"No, I"m not all right," she said. She gave him an incredulous look and flung out one hand in the direction of the television. "That"s my house."
"There wasn"t anybody at home, was there?" he asked.
"What?" She looked from him to her plate full of greasy food. Back to him again. Already in knots, her stomach lurched. The film clip had shown the blaze roaring out of every window and door. Even if the firefighters were able to put the fire out right after the broadcast, her work, the quilts, the paintings, her clothes, the few mementoes she had from her childhood, everything would be gone. "No. No, n.o.body was home, I live there alone. No pets. Just me in my house. And all of my things. Everything. Everything I own."
Mary and the young man stared at each other. The thick sticky film of shock began to evaporate, leaving raw incredulity behind.
This was a bad joke, she thought. Right? This was the beginning of an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, like the one where the chick sits in a bar and finds out she"s being hunted by a psychotic maniac, only he"s not a psycho but a cyborg who sounded like he had a speech impediment, and he can"t say her name right.
Right?
"I"m getting you a drink. On the house," said the bartender. He winced. "s.h.i.t. No pun intended . . . you just look like you could use a bit of brandy or something. I"ll be right back. My G.o.d." He patted the air between them with both hands as if it might fix something, or mean anything, and he rushed away.
Mary watched him go. She knew what she was doing-she was having a Sarah Connor moment. Only this wasn"t quite like an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. It was a cross between an Arnold movie and The Sixth Sense. She was having a Sarah Connor moment, and she saw dead people. Mother Mary or Mother Teresa, or whoever the h.e.l.l she had seen in her vision, told her she couldn"t go home and she was in danger. Then she found her house burning on Live at Five.
Just because you"re paranoid . . .
Several feet away, the bartender poured coffee into a cup and tilted some brandy into it. He waved another waiter over and spoke to him. They both looked at her.
Her ricocheting thoughts continued. In the Arnold movie, the cyborg went to Sarah Connor"s apartment.
She knew she was mentally babbling, but it was an urgent babble because there was someplace she was supposed to get to, she could feel it, some appalled realization bubbling up out of the toxic sludge of her shock. She didn"t want to deal with it but she had to.
Because in the movie Arnold the cyborg went to Sarah Connor"s apartment.
Sarah wasn"t there but her roommate and her roommate"s boyfriend were. They died a horrible death.
And a neighbor called in the fire just after three o"clock.
Justin had said that he would come to pick her up around two thirty. She hadn"t been home, but he wouldn"t have left right away.
He was such a stubborn mule. He would have waited to see if she was late getting back from running errands. He would have stayed and stewed, paced and bitten his nails, and then he would have used his copy of her house key to let himself in.
Only when he was quite sure they couldn"t make the appointment would he have given up and called Tony"s office to apologize and say they were going to be late. Or maybe he would have said they were not coming at all that day and would have to reschedule.
But he would have been there.
She hadn"t brought her cell phone, because she hadn"t wanted to pick up a call from work. She lunged off her chair and grabbed her purse. The bartender hurried over to her with the brandy-laced coffee. She said, "Your pay phones."
He told her, pointing. She raced to the phone mounted on the wall near the restrooms and dug in her purse for coins. She didn"t have enough for the long-distance call. She raced back to the bar and slapped down a ten-dollar bill. "Quarters."